Brussels faces new asbestos alarm

Date: 20/06/1996

By Rory Watson

ALMOST 800,000 ecu has been paid out in compensation to a handful of European Commission officials whose health has been damaged by leaking asbestos in their former Berlaymont headquarters.

The payments have been made to four employees after they successfully argued that their illnesses were work-related and directly linked to the asbestos. Although a similar claim from another official has been turned down, four further applications are currently being examined.

The potential compensation bill looks set to climb from the 770,000 ecu paid out so far, the bulk of which - 641,000 ecu - went to just one official, Arnaldo Lucaccioni.

Last June, the Commission contacted all staff who had worked in the Belgian-owned Berlaymont and offered them special medical examinations to determine whether they might have been contaminated by the asbestos.

The offer has since been taken up by 500 officials. From the 150 results which have now been processed, officials have confirmed that no examples of malignancy have been discovered and that just two cases of pleural plaques, which require further monitoring, have been detected.

As efforts continue to try to establish the exact extent of the danger which threatened those who worked in the Berlaymont, EU officials have raised asbestos-related fears of a very different kind with the Belgian government.

Their worries concern school-aged children and emerged as long-overdue work began on the science building at the European school in the Brussels suburb of Uccle.

Despite a categorical assurance from Belgium's Régie des Bâtiments that the building was asbestos-free, two subsequent independent surveys by outside experts found traces of the material.

“Unlike the Berlaymont, which has been covered in a special outer layer, the work at the Uccle school was going to be carried out without any protective covering,” complained one concerned parent.

The school's parents' association immediately raised the issue with Régie des Bâtiments Minister André Flahaut, launched a court case against the Belgian department and successfully obtained a court order preventing the demolition work from taking place until protective measures had been agreed.

These were negotiated and set out in an agreement between the Régie, parents and the school's governor.

But even then, the school's problems were far from over.

After work to strip out the asbestos was not completed over the weekend, as had been planned, the school had to be closed and the pupils sent home last Tuesday (11 June).

“What annoyed me was that most parents did not know about the situation and sent their children to school on Monday, although some had obviously heard about what was happening and kept theirs at home,” said a parent.

Several hundred pupils also appear to have left the school in the afternoon after they discovered that the work had not been completed.

Different health and safety concerns are now occupying the minds of parents at Brussels' second European school in Woluwe. They fear that the Régie is trying to avoid any costly delays to plans to renovate and extend the premises by pressing for a guarantee which would prevent the work, once started, from being stopped.

“We certainly want the work to be carried out, but we do not want to compromise over our children's safety. Constructions sites are dangerous places at the best of times,” said one parent.

Any further delays would prevent the Uccle project from being completed by the end of the summer holidays and would cause the Woluwe programme to run into next year, creating a further headache for the administrators who are trying to find temporary premises for the pupils affected.

“What this confirms is that we have considerable delays and underestimation of the problems involved. This work should have been carried out years ago, but the Belgian authorities always leave a decision until the last minute and by then it is almost too late,” said one parent.